Steganography and Steganalysis

Steganography is the technique of hiding confidential information within any media. Steganography is often confused with cryptography because the two are similar in the way that they both are used to protect confidential information. The difference between the two is in the appearance in the processed output; the output of steganography operation is not apparently visible but in cryptography the output is scrambled so that it can draw attention. Steganlysis is process todetect of presence of steganography.

Introduction
The objective of steganography is to hide a secret message within a cover-media in such a way that others cannot discern the presence of the hidden message. Technically in simple words steganography means hiding one piece of data within another. Modern steganography uses the opportunity of hiding information into digital multimedia files and also at the network packet level. Hiding information into a media requires following elements [2] The cover media(C) that will hold the hidden data The secret message (M), may be plain text, cipher text or any type of data The stego function (Fe) and its inverse (Fe-1) An optional stego-key (K) or password may be used to hide and unhide the message. The stego function operates over cover media and the message (to be hidden) along with a stego-key (optionally) to produce a stego media (S). The schematic of steganographic operation is shown below.

Figure 1: The Steganographic operation

Steganography and Cryptography are great partners in spite of functional difference. It is common practice to use cryptography with steganography.

Modern techniques of steganography

The common modern technique of steganography exploits the property of the media itself to convey a message. The following media are the candidate for digitally embedding message [3]: Plaintext Still imagery Audio and Video IP datagram.

Steganalysis Techniques
The properties of electronic media are being changed after hiding any object into that. This can result in the form of degradation in terms of quality or unusual characteristics of the media: Steganalysis techniques based on unusual pattern in the media or Visual Detection of the same. For example in the case of Network Steganography unusual pattern is introduced in the TCP/IP packet header. If the packet analysis technique of Intrusion Detection System of a network is based on white list pattern (usual pattern), then this method of network steganography can be defeated.

In the case of Visual detection steganalysis technique a set of stego images are compared with original cover images and note the visible difference. Signature of the hidden message can be derived by comparing numerous images. Cropping or padding of image also is a visual clue of hidden message because some stego tool is cropping or padding blank spaces to fit the stego image into fixed size. Difference in file size between cover image and stego images, increase or decrease of unique colors in stego images can also be used in the Visual Detection steganalysis technique.

Steganography Attacks
Steganographic attacks consist of detecting, extracting and destroying hidden object of the stego media. Steganography attack is followed by steganalysis. There are several types of attacks based on the information available for analysis. Some of them are as follows: Known carrier attack: The original cover media and stego media both are available for analysis. Steganography only attack: In this type of attacks, only stego media is available for analysis. Known message attack: The hidden message is known in this case. Known steganography attack: The cover media, stego media as well as the steganography tool or algorithm, are known.